1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to peanut harvesters and more particularly to a harvester for digging peanut vines and removing the green peanuts from the vine in a single apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Mechanical harvesting of peanuts has been primarily limited in the past to use of machines which dig the peanut vines and deposit the picked vines back on the row, generally inverted. The peanuts are permitted to dry out, gathered, and later removed from the dried vines by mechanical pickers. However, this approach requires two passes over the field and is not suitable for green peanuts. Green peanuts are found to be much more difficult to separate from the vines and generally manual labor has been used for this purpose.
There have been a number of peanut combines proposed in the prior art and described in the following U.S. Patents:
U.S. Pat. No. 2,788,628, Philips, Jr. PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 2,522,644, Searcy PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,053,034, Harrington et al PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,404,517, Whitfield et al PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,775,953, Poutsma
In general, these machines are very complex and none are known to have come into general use. A 1961 article entitled "New Method of Harvesting Virginia Bunch Peanuts" by William T. Mills appeared in the Transactions of the ASAE (Vol. 4, No. 1, Pages 26, 27 and 30, 1961), St. Joseph, Mich. This paper described the progress in a machine and method using a plant conveyer belt disposed at an angle which picks up a peanut plant and carries it upward to a point where a pair of cylinders having curved blades mounted thereon separate the peanuts by knocking them loose from the vine roots. Means are also described for removing leaves and dirt from the picked peanuts. Although this article appeared over 20 years ago, the harvesting of green peanuts in the southern part of the United States appears to be still done manually.
The price that can be obtained for green peanuts is closely related to the cleanliness of the peanuts and the freedom from bruising or other damage to the peanuts. The present invention is capable of delivering picked peanuts directly from the field and which are very clean and free from dirt, leaves, and other debris. The stems may then be removed in the apparatus described in my U.S. Pat. No. 4,542,687 which discloses a green peanut destemmer and washer. After destemming, the peanuts may be washed and automatically packed in hampers. Such peanuts are exceptionally clean and undamaged and claim a higher price in the market place than manually picked and washed green peanuts.